Emory Professor Resigns from the Carter Center

[furman]

http://www.forward.com/blogs/campaign-confidential/emory-professor-resigns-from-the-carter-center/



Emory Professor Resigns from the Carter Center
December 06, 2006

A promient Middle East scholar, Dr. Kenneth W. Stein, announced his resignation as a fellow of Emory University’s Carter Center, in response to former President Jimmy Carter’s new book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”

Stein, an Emory University professor who also directs the university’s Middle East Research Program and the Emory Institute for the Study of Modern Israel, characterized Carter’s book as “replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments” in an email that announced his resignation yesterday.

He explained: “My continued association with the Center leaves the impression that I am sanctioning a series of egregious errors and polemical conclusions which appeared in President Carter’s book. I can not allow that impression to stand.”

Here is the full text of Stein’s letter:

Hi-

This note is to inform you that yesterday, I sent letters to President Jimmy Carter, Emory University President Jim Wagner, and Dr. John Hardman, Executive Director of the Carter Center resigning my position, effectively immediately, as Middle East Fellow of the Carter Center of Emory University. This ends my 23 year association with an institution that in some small way I helped shape and develop.

<snip>

Since I left the Center physically thirteen years ago, the Middle East program of the Center has waned as has my status as a Carter Center Fellow. For the record, I had nothing to do with the research, preparation, writing, or review of President Carter’s recent publication. Any material which he used from the book we did together in 1984, The Blood of Abraham, he used unilaterally. President Carter’s book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments. Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book. Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information or to unpack it with cuts, deftly slanted to provide a particular outlook. Having little access to Arabic and Hebrew sources, I believe, clearly handicapped his understanding and analyses of how history has unfolded over the last decade. Falsehoods, if repeated often enough become meta-truths, and they then can become the erroneous baseline for shaping and reinforcing attitudes and for policy-making. The history and interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is already drowning in half-truths, suppositions, and self-serving myths; more are not necessary.

<snip>

http://www.forward.com/blogs/campaign-confidential/emory-professor-resigns-from-the-carter-center/

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[acmejack]

2. Peace must be suppressed at all costs in Palestine.

Even if it calls for the smearing of one of the great Statesmen of our time. It appears there is no shortage of those willing to perform that function. How terribly sad. Implacable hatreds must be placed before any form of idealism in order to allow our children to share in this brutality.

[everythingsxen]

10. Do you have any sort of basis to back up that assertion?

Where in the letter and article does he call for no peace in Palestine? Oh that's right, he doesn't.

Something I find vexing about your post:

Even if it calls for the smearing of one of the great Statesmen of our time. It appears there is no shortage of those willing to perform that function.

So many people have come forward and said that Carter is making stuff up and that the book is incredibly biased and blatantly false in places, yet somehow it is all these people who are to blame and not Carter? Are they involved in some sort of conspiracy? Do you think it is a conspiracy to point out the fact that Carter's book is a series of half-truths and falsehoods? Perhaps it is the same conspiracy which is suppressing peace in Palestine...

No, that's right, the force that is suppressing peace in Palestine is the Palestinians themselves along with groups like Hamas and the ISM.

[msmcghee]

3. Instead of the usual knee-jerk comments . .

. . try learning something.

Go to this site and pick a paper or two to read. Find out what the difference is between politics and academia. This guy is a scholar who just resigned a 23 year position with the institute he helped found (with Carter).

You might consider that he might know something about the topic and that his reasons could be more than a chance to "hate Palestinians".

http://www.ismi.emory.edu/JournalArticles.html

I just read a paper from that list that he published as Israel was contemplating leaving Gaza. It's very interesting and shows far more understanding of the motivations of the various actors than Carter has shown in his very poorly named book.

For me, this reveals Carter as a politician with an agenda - trading on his good will and name.

"Israel's Disengagement from the Gaza Strip: Precedents, Motivations, and Outcomes," LA COMMUNITA INTERNATIONALE FASC, 4/ 2005, pp. 633-641 (ROME).

http://www.ismi.emory.edu/JournalArticles.html

[Buzz Clik]

6. Bullshit.

This was a political move. His position exists because of a politician. He's resigning a chair in a noisy fashion because Carter published a book that doesn't meet his "academic" standards?

Not a chance.

[msmcghee]

7. He had he guts to list the acedemic standards . .

. . that he believed were violated . . and stated he would follow up with plenty of details in the coming weeks. Then he backed that up by resigning a 23 year professional position.

He didn't just make a statement of outrage that someone said something that violated his cherished beliefs with no facts to back it up - like you just did.

[IntiRaymi]

11. Of the two, he is the unknown.

So, he stands to make a name for himself.
This particular professor has done nothing but help himself to the good name that Carter has. Otherwise, he would be just another academician, toiling in obscurity.
The fact that someone has written a paper or two means very little. Or at least very little compared the lasting peace that Carter managed between Egypt and Israel.

[msmcghee]

12. It's interesting that instead of refuting any of his assertions . .

. . you make ugly guesses about his motivations based on . . nothing but your guesses. I am always amazed at what passes for argument here.

[IntiRaymi]

13. I am amazed at the amazement that you amazingly express!

Amazing!

[madinmaryland]

4. I would be interested in what these issues are.

Mr. Stein makes quite a few accusations, but there are no examples of these "errors" and "falsehoods".

If Mr. Carter did do shoddy work, then shame on him.

[msmcghee]

5. If you took the time to read the linked article . .

. . you would see that the letter to the board explains his general reasons for resigning. In the letter he explains that in the coming weeks he will provide a detailed analysis of the situation including the specifics of his disagreements that caused his resignation.

[furman]

8. NYTimes: Former Aide Parts With Carter Over Book

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/washington/07book.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Former Aide Parts With Carter Over Book

By BRENDA GOODMAN and JULIE BOSMAN
Published: December 7, 2006

<snip>

That criticism is the latest in a growing chorus of academics who have taken issue with the book, including Alan M. Dershowitz, professor of law at Harvard, who called the book “ahistorical,” and David Makovsky, director of the Project on the Middle East Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“I was just very saddened by it,” Mr. Makovsky said. “I just found so many errors.”

<snip>

“You can’t write history simply off the top of your head and expect it to be credible,” he (Stein) said.

<snip>

[msmcghee]

9. Carter is an enigma.

From a PBS documentary on his life:

Carter was one of the more exasperating men ever to claim the White House," one journalist said. "His tenacity, so admirable, could shift to stubbornness; his religious faith to self-righteousness. His brilliant mind could be bound up by intricate details.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/pt.html

As a Dem I was delighted when he was elected but I was put off by his response in the Playboy interview during the campaign. It wasn't that he felt guilty for having "lusted in his heart" - I saw that as honesty. It was more a question of judgment. I have learned to be wary of people who take unnecessary risks to show others that their personal ideology is a form of ultimate truth.

I see ideology as an attempt to intellectualize core emotional beliefs - and that's not possible. So, ideology always becomes a narrative that can be conveniently defended and, relentlessly pursued, usually becomes an end in itself. Ideologues invariably fall into the trap of mistaking their own ideology for some sense of "ultimate truth". That is a trap that the devoutly religious, who must try to live their lives within that narrative by definition, must eagerly leap into.

(I just watched Spike Lee's Malcolm-X last nite.)

Based on the numerous excerpts, reviews and discussions I've been following I think Carter's book is a good example of how in his old age, and perhaps in a vain attempt to firmly tie his legacy to his ideology, his religious faith has turned to self-righteousness.

Unless I see some more positive reviews I probably won't read it due to my distaste for ideological narrative.

[bemildred]

14. Maps in Carter's book are questioned

NEW YORK — Harsh allegations over President Carter's new book on Israel and the Palestinians came into sharper focus Thursday when a former top aide to Carter said the book appeared to contain maps that were "unusually similar" to those in an earlier book.

Kenneth W. Stein had sent a blistering letter of resignation Monday to officials at the Carter Center in Atlanta charging that the former president's book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," had factual errors, invented segments and, most seriously, "copied materials not cited."

But, in a telephone interview Thursday evening, Stein offered a narrower criticism. "It appears that at least two maps that came out of the Carter book were or are very closely similar, or unusually similar, to maps that were produced and published in Dennis Ross' book 'The Missing Peace,' " Stein said.

That book, published in 2004, is also about the search for peace in the Middle East. "This could be incredibly coincidental, or it could not," Stein said. "But it goes to the way history books should be written, and the way citations should be made when material is borrowed."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-carter8dec08,0,7400200.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

[Scurrilous]

15. Similar maps?

That's all he's got?

What a farce.

[breakaleg]

16. I'm also waiting for something more. Serious accusations were made and I'd

like to see something substantial.

In either case, at least it's brought some attention to the conflict and that's always a good thing.

[bemildred]

17. That's the word that came to my mind too, farce.

Assuming that's all he's got, his own insinuation of plagiarism.

[bemildred]

18. Plagiarism Charge Against Carter Is 2nd To Roil Jewish World

A plagiarism charge was leveled this week by a former close associate of Carter's, who has resigned from the Carter Center in protest over the ex-president's new book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.

---

Carter's publisher, Simon & Schuster, and his allies had expected supporters of Israel to criticize the book for its arguments. But they appear to have been taken by surprise by another of Prof. Stein's charges: that the book is "replete with... copied materials not cited."

Mr. Carter's spokeswoman, Deanna Coneglio, issued a statement in the former president's name which downplayed Prof. Stein's connection to the Center as "titular." Tthe statement did not address the plagiarism charge. Simon & Schuster publisher David Rosenthal told The New York Times that he is "confident in work," but then hedged slightly, saying, "Do we check every line in every book? No, but that's not the issue here. I have no reason to doubt President Carter's research."

Prof. Stein declined to name the book or books from which he says Carter copied words, because he is preparing an article that will reveal those details. He told The Times, "There are elements in the book that were lifted from another source. That source is now acting on his or her own advice about what to do because of this."

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=117034